Union negotiations done for the day, going home sick, AMA

Kinja'd!!! by "ImmoralMinority" (araimondo)
Published 01/17/2017 at 14:22

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I’ve had it and I am headed for the couch. I will be bored the rest of the afternoon, so ask me anything! What have you always wanted to know about ag labor law, Sunchasers, Vespas, or silly rescue dogs? Or Pumpkin (though I will use great caution in how I answer those)?

To get it started, this happened last week and made me so happy (he and I have antagonized each other for almost 3 years).

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This is what they said about him when he was Chair of the NLRB under Clinton (quotes are from a review of his book in the Nation):

“During Gould’s tenure, Congressional Republicans sought to cripple the NLRB’s operations with budget cuts, harassing oversight hearings and nonstop political sniping. Positive initiatives, like general counsel Fred Feinstein’s attempt to get more federal court orders reinstating fired workers while their cases were being litigated, became a lightning rod for conservative criticism. Under these trying circumstances, Gould, Feinstein and pro-labor board members like Sarah Fox and the late Margaret Browning needed to stick together and coordinate their strategy in the face of common adversaries. Gould, however, quickly fell out with his colleagues in a fit of pique over their failure “to accord me stature and defer to my leadership.” His “leadership” soon took the form of public feuding with, and criticism of, his fellow Clinton appointees–combined with attention-getting public statements about many of the leading labor-management controversies of the day. Even when he was on the right side of these disputes, his ill-timed interventions had the effect of exacerbating the NLRB’s political problems.”

“Unhappily for labor, Gould’s unexpected personal showboating, squabbling with would-be allies and what Flynn calls his “near-genius for irritating Congress” impeded, rather than aided, the administrative tinkering that Clinton appointees were able to do at the board during his tenure. Vain, impolitic and–in the view of some critics–hopelessly naļve, Gould often did as much harm as good. In this respect, he was not unlike the Dunlop Commission, in that Reich’s vehicle for building a political consensus on labor-law reform instead fed right-wing attempts to weaken the NLRA.”

He had the same failings at California’s ALRB. He was arrogant and rude, and presumed to know more about agriculture than people who had been around the industry for decades. He proved he was nothing more than an academic lost in the real world, and I’m glad he’s gone.

Good riddance, and good-bye!